Grants talk:IEG/Wikiproject WikiBadge

Thanks for starting

Hi Nasir, thanks for starting this proposal! Online appreciation campaigns seem like a useful way to be thinking about editor-engagement, I'll be curious to learn more about how something like this could work for Bangla Wikipedia. I can see you're still working on some sections of your proposal, like budget. If you'd like some hands-on help thinking through any of these, you might consider checking out one of the IEG proposal help sessions that we're hosting in Google Hangouts and IRC next week. And of course, once you're ready to submit it for review, please update your proposal's status (in your page's Probox markup) from DRAFT to PROPOSED. Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Badge system

The Wikipedia Education Program has talked for years about having better badge systems. It would be nice to combine this effort with an existing one.

Another proposal has been making actual certificates, because in some places and instances people benefit from getting "certifications". I have heard also that certifications are important in Bangladesh and that people list them when applying for jobs. Is this also a certification proposal? Why send something in through paper mail? Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:04, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a online encyclopedia, but we arrange different type of offline evente like meetups, workshops, seminars and so on. I think offline events are more encouraging than the online events. For example we can arrange online meetings but offline meetups are more helpful. Similarly we will give badges to the contributors but at the same time if we send a real badge to their mailing address then they will be more encouraged. They can wear these badges, show their friends and so on. So we will send 'real' badges to the contributors.

We can say it as a "certifications" system. I believe it is very important and encouraging for the new/ existing contributors to know her/his own progress and how s/he is doing compared with the others. Along with this a certification and/or a recognition is very inspiring for their contribution. This is the main reason to start this project and it would be great if i can talk with the Wikipedia Education Program team. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 18:57, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Gadgets or other standalone tools?

Hi Nasir,

In order to confirm you meet the eligibility criteria for this project, we need to understand what sort of tools you have in mind. Will these be created as bots, scripts, gadgets, or other tools you can independently develop using existing community access to API queries and hosting via Labs? If these are tools you cannot build yourself, who do you expect will assist? Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko,

Thanks for your query.

There will be several parts of this tool. User might need to install/enable gadgets for help me to access their contribution stat, but if i can find a way to get these data in other ways then it will not be necessary. There will be a standalone application which will function as a core to analysis raw data and prepare eligible contributor lists. Then i will use a bot to post the notifications and badges to the related user pages, along with this the project page will be updated where the updates will be posted periodically.

My main role on this project will be the project manager. I have some codding skills and experience in developing mediawiki website, skins and bots, but i will need at least one coder and i will assist in developing the tools. For the badges i will need some icons/images, first i will search in the Commons repository, if there is not sufficient i will hire a designer to help me here. This tool will be released in some open license and i will welcome everyone who wants to assist and make the project successful. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 05:39, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming that any tools developed can be independently created by you and your team. We'll mark this project as eligible for review now, based on this. Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Budget

Can you please provide a more detailed budge breakdown for the expenses you're planning for in this project? I'm not clear if you're planning to hire contractors, etc - separating out your best guess for each cost would be useful (How much for 1 project manager working full time, how much for another type of contractor, how much for shipping expenses, etc etc). Thanks, Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Siko , the budget section has been update. It is more like what i am expecting. As the project has not approved yet, i can not hire the developers and other resources. Sorry for the delay. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 06:40, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for posting these details, they are helpful :) Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2014

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2014 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2014 begins on 21 October 2014, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Jtud (WMF) (talk) 22:16, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

early feedback from rubin16

Hello! I am one of the IEG members and want to share my early thoughts about your project, feel free to ask me if something isn't clear :) rubin16 (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• what kind of statistics do you need? I am definitely sure that there is no need to develop a separate app, ask users for gadgets, etc. as there a lot of scripts/tools to analyze users' activities: there are a lot of them in en.wiki, ru.wiki, etc. and you can just ask their owners to expand script's work to your project. For example, when we were preparing for giving prizes to the most active members of Russian Wikimedia projects on behalf of Wikimedia Russia, one of the users prepared us various tables: number of edits per users for the year, number of edits per users without bots for the year, number of articles written, number of admin and other actions, etc. All scripts are located on Wikimedia Labs and there is no need to re-invent a bicycle, you can just join that project on Labs and adapt script to your project, that would be quick and easy and will save the vast majority of project costs :) But again, we need to know that kind of statistics you need to suggest you something fully applicable for your project rubin16 (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

thanks for the questions. there are several sub questions in this paragraph and i am trying replying one by one.

• i want to get a number of statistics like the list of wikipedians by the total number of edits on specific namespaces (like Template, Wikipedia), talk pages (on different namespaces), user talk pages, village pump, total number new article creation, new page creation on different namespaces, contributions on specific list of pages(including articles and pages on other namespaces) total number of byes added/removed, total edit count and so on (you can also help me to find other areas of contributions). The main point here is to appropriate the users in every way they contribute and that is why i want to split the total number of edits into several parts. There are user who only contribute to the policy pages, and you will not find their names on the top editors list but their contributions are valuable. By using this tool i want to find them and appropriate for their contributions.
• I do not want to develop all the tools rather i will find the existing ones first. I mentioned this in my proposal and in the replies of the previous questions. I have a plan to ask in the wikimedia-l mailing list to help me to find the existing tools. There will be a tool, which will utilize the existing (if there will be a way to contact with the developer) and new ones and show the reports/statistics.
• In the project proposal i mentioned that i will use the existing tools depends on the availability and total cost will be less than the asked amount.

• I would suggest to somehow enhance your targets - for example, to compare average number of active users, number of edits per month - something, that is more measurable. rubin16 (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• active editors, editors by total edit will be there, but i want some others too. And i think i have covered this in the previous answer.

• So, how many badges are budgeted? What is the estimated cost of one badge? What are expected delivery costs? How much is budgeted for the design of badges? From my personal experience, design is more money-consuming than distribution rubin16 (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• number of badges are not finalized yet but roughly it will be 10 Category, 10 editors per category, and distributed for 10 Weeks. For preparing and delivery one badge will cost around $1.
• Similar as the tool development i also have a plan to reuse the existing designs for the badges. There are a huge list of Banstars and i also found some other Banstar like projects, so i will also use the designs from there too. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 17:37, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

• From my point of view, I wouldn't send personal badges for the every first edit due to a lot of reasons: you will need to ask every new editor for his personal details to send badge (and it's not friendly for editor's confidentiality), some users can start cheating and making a lot of small edits from lots of new accounts rather than developing one account, etc. rubin16 (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing this out, I wouldn't also send badges to every new user for their first edit, but i can add a badge to their user page/badge page. But i will send the badges to the users 50th, 100th, 500th, 1000th edits. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 17:37, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

• What is the exact list of achievements that would be required to get a badge? rubin16 (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• Well, the basic requirement is to edit wikipedia :D . the badges will just show the level of contributions of that individual user. For example to get a 100th edit badge the total edit count needed to cross the 100, and to get 10th article creation badge user have to create 10 new articles, same way to get 5th featured article/ good article badge they have to be the main contributors of the featured article/ good article and so on. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 17:37, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Not enough data?

Thank you for this proposal. As Lane noted, badges are something of a perennial proposal, e.g. the Badges page created in 2011, and the discussion of the OpenBadges system. My main questions about it would be:

• Would it not be better to discuss this further with other interested parties, either in the IdeaLab or in Badges or on mailing lists, to ensure you do have the clearest idea of the degree of availability of the tools and stats needed, and of the likelihood of adoption by at least some communities? (It seems you have not (yet?) included evidence of community discussion even on the Bengali Wikipedia, where you propose to deploy this.) In other words, perhaps it is too soon to make a concrete funding proposal for this work? Asaf (WMF) (talk) 02:51, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I had a plan to start this project about a year ago and on that time discussed it in the Bengali Wikipedia village pump. Though on that time the project name was not fixed, but i shared my idea with the community. It was appreciated and a number of most active users supported that idea (please check here). So as i discussed and agreed earlier i did not start the same discussion again on my wiki. I could start it form the IeadLab but somehow i missed it and even completed proposal about a week ago of the closing date. When answering the rubin16's questions in the previous section, i also mentioned that i am aware of a few tools and will ask via wikimedia-l mailing list to involve maximum community members. And i think it might not take a long time to find the existing relevant usable tools. I am aware of the OpenBadges system and had plans to use it, so that it can be used and imported in other similar systems. But it is true true that i did not visit the Badges page. Badges are not functional and the discussion is not mature enough, so i believe this WikiBadge project could be started as a pilot and through this project we will find (and try to accommodate) all the other related ideas. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 16:37, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

• Is there some non-anecdotal non-intuitive evidence that badges, and in particular physical (=expensive) badges, are significant motivating factors in small to medium wikis? Asaf (WMF) (talk) 02:51, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I did not run any survey or research to find out the impact of the expensive physical badges. Recently i saw that young people are using badges (mostly in Dhaka, capital badges), which represents their thoughts, activities, the programming languages they love, member of the group and so on. Along with this in the London Wikimania i found that all the chapters create badges and distribute free of charge, even in the Wikimedia Bangladesh we also planning to create several type of badges to distribute on different events. In this case user will get the badges for their contribution to Wikipedia and i believe these will play a big role to motivate the users to get more badges and contribute regularly. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 16:37, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

• If this does get undertaken, what would be your particular contribution to this work, beyond having the initiative of proposing this, given you cannot create the tools yourself and/or the tools may already exist? In other words, why would it make sense to fund your project-management time in addition to paying a coder? Asaf (WMF) (talk) 02:51, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I will lead this project as a project manager. If required i will also contribute to the codding. I am skilled in web development and data management, by profession i work as a software developer in a software company and also work as an integration manager at Management Information System department of the Directorate General of Health Services of Bangladesh. If we assume that all the related tools are already exists then i will use those tools and try to make sure that this project runs successfully within the mentioned timeline. You mentioned the Badges page which was created by a WMF staff and i did not see any visible output there, i do not want to repeat this here.--Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 16:37, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikistats

Needs a budget breakdown. In particular I'm interested in the cost of the statistics part, as I don't like statistics efforts which can't be integrated into wikistats (where they'd benefit all projects and avoid duplication). --Nemo 08:59, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I do not have any plan to create the statistics sripts/tools form the scratch. I know there are wikistats available, but i may need to run it more frequently. Along with this i use the xtools frequently, specially i found the pcount tool very useful. A modified version of this tool can serve many of the statistics i mentioned earlier. In the en:Wikipedia:Statistics page there are other several useful links available like en:, en:Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, en:Wipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of recent edits, en:Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count and so on. I hope i answered your query.

There are other several statistics tools available in other Wikimedia projects, i also have plans to import these tools to Bengali Wikipedia. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 19:10, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

No, you didn't answer. I know there are many tools (see Statistics for the central directory) but that's unrelated. Tell us the cost for that part of the work, thanks. --Nemo 08:19, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you noticed that in the budget section of the proposal i mentioned that, i have a plan to hire developers in $13/hour (roughly) rate. But there is no farther budget breakdown where you will find the cost for developing a tool to calculate an user's total edit count (for example). Though the project has not approved yet, but i tried to find the existing tools/source to get the statistical data.I found some useful ones, few others can be used after making some project specific change and there might be others. If all the tools are exists, then i will use those tools and will not try to build any of those again and then the expense will be $0. Otherwise i will have to create those statistics tools, but on that case i am not sure how much will i be able to cover within this project. --180.234.52.33 09:35, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Physical badges or certificates?

Hi, could you show us a sample badge like the ones you would want to distribute per post? Are we talking about something like this:

• 
  Would that be the type of badge?

Or would you rather send them a print-out certificate, saying that user:yxz has accomplished the task of creating 1000 good articles? For the purpose of illustrating your CV and for mailing them around, a printed certificate would seem easier to handle. Bu then I have no idea, whether badges in Bangladesh are popular and would actually be worn...Looking forward to your further description, best,--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 10:31, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi, badges are not exactly same as the one you mentioned above. Your mentioned badges are full metal and should be expensive enough. Rather i want to distribute the badges similar as the following. It will be cheaper to produce but at the same time it is wearable.

There is no plan to send the printed certificates to the users. But if someone wants to add a reference of his/her contribution to Wikipedia on the CV, they can use the badge page of his/her user account. The badge system will use the Open Badges standard, so there are options to fetch these data on any online CV, website, share on social media sites and use in other places. At the same time it will be easy to verify.

My point is getting the online badges and get the options to share on social sites will encourage the users to contribute more and they will be appreciated by their online friend/followers and others(who have not started to contribute yet) will be informed that there is an option to get these badges. And when they will get an physical badge and wear it an other groups of people will be informed. These badges will certify that the user has contributed to Wikipedia (on next phase other Wikimedia projects might be added) at the same time these will work as an advertisement to inform others about the Wikipedia. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 16:27, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Community input/demand/fears, also internationalization

I definitely like the idea, and have my own positive experience with similar reward systems (on qype, which is now yelp). But there is one thing that came to my mind: If this system was to be implemented in the German language wikipedia, it would most probably meet harsh resistance. (Some) people would not want to be exposed in such a way and they would fear that such a system would set a wrong incentive for mass-production or mass-editing, while the thoroughly researching and pondering author of high quality articles would find himself on the bottom of all lists and feel discouraged. Do you reckon this attitude could also spring up in the Bangladesh wikipedia? What would be your counter-arguments? For the Germans, it would probably be necessary to provide an opt-out-functionality for single editors, who would not wish to be displayed on lists etc.. Does your project entail such an opt-out-option? Best,--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 10:43, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Poupou l'quourouce, I totally agree with you and am aware that not everyone will like to expose their name on the contributors list. May be i forgot the mention this in the proposal but There will be an opt-out-functionality so that anyone can request to remove their name. When i proposed this idea in the Bengali Wikipedia village pump no one mentioned this but if their exists one then s/he can use the opt-out feature. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 09:39, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Wikiproject WikiBadge

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities? Does it have potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.9
(B) Innovation and learning Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem? Is the potential impact greater than the risks? Can we measure success?	7.3
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months? How realistic/efficient is the budget? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	6.8
(D) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support? Does it support diversity?	6.9
Comments from the committee: Badges could be a very useful tool to motivate editors. They may also help to shed light on activities which do not receive a lot of public praise, and motivate editors to engage in such tasks. Could provide motivation and reward to editors who engage in cumbersome but not very popular or visible tasks, which are generally overlooked when it comes to awards. If successful, it might be useful to encourage the development of smaller wikis in other languages Difficult to measure success, and the metrics proposed are rather vague. It will be hard to tell whether the badges are in fact motivating editors. Relatively low risk, but some concerns that scores could also hurt the enthusiasm of editors and turn the editing of Wikipedia into a numbers-game. We are unsure about skills and experience of the team. It seems they have a good idea, but it is not very clear how that should be put into practice. Difficult to assess level of support for this in the Bengali community as there are few endorsements. Endorsements from editors from other language versions do indicate the desire to see the project established in other communities. The project needs more planning: the first phase would be to assess in more detail what is there already and to make a detailed plan including how such a system could be structured, implemented, and sustained if successful. Based on this page, https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesRecentTrends.htm, Bengali Wikipedia has 1 thousand users with over 10 edits, and only around a hundred active users. There may not be enough editors to send badges to, or one person will receive many of them. Expenses for management and development seem high. Doesn't seem to be much need for tool development - statistics are already there; they just need to organize a process of reviewing analytics and dispatching badges. Missing clear fit between stated problem and proposed solution.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results, and WMF is proceeding with its due-diligence. You are welcome to continue making updates to your proposal pages during this period. Funding decisions will be announced by early December. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 17:02, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Round 2 2014 Decision

This project has not been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding, but we hope you'll continue to engage in the program. Please drop by the IdeaLab to share and refine future ideas!

Comments regarding this decision:
Badges are an idea worth exploring, and we would welcome a future proposal with more engagement and endorsement from the target community. A review of existing badge systems and a more detailed plan for designing, building, and sustaining a badge-based approach to motivation and recognition may also strengthen such efforts.

Next steps:

1. Review the feedback provided on your proposal and to ask for any clarifications you need using this talk page.
2. Visit the IdeaLab to continue developing this idea and share any new ideas you may have.
3. To reapply with this project in the future, please make updates based on the feedback provided in this round before resubmitting it for review in a new round.
4. Check the schedule for the next open call to submit proposals - we look forward to helping you apply for a grant in a future round.

Questions? Contact us.